The longest-serving commissioner of the Guyana Elections Commission, Dr Keshav ‘Bud’ Mangal, has died.
Mangal, who in January of this year resigned as commissioner of the local election management body, died yesterday of kidney failure. The octogenarian had been battling illness for the past several months.
Upon Mangal’s resignation in January, Gecom Chairman Dr Steve Surujbally had told Stabroek News that he had been the only remaining commissioner who had served during the time of Guyana’s historic 1992 elections.
Beginning his work with the commission when it was a temporary body for the 1992 and 1997 elections, Mangal became a permanent commissioner in 2000, when the commission was established in its present form.
Speaking with Stabroek News last evening, Surujbally said Mangal had served the commission well over a number of years and though in the last few months he had been ailing and as a result left the commission he had kept in touch.
“We will remember him as being tough in his questions and wanting to get the commission’s work done well,” Surujbally said, adding “I am very saddened at the loss of a great man.”
He said Mangal was his personal doctor.
Architect Albert Rodrigues, speaking to Stabroek News from Mangal’s home last evening, described him as “a splendid humanitarian, who was actively involved in the fight for free and fair elections.”
According to Rodrigues, Mangal a man of high principles, with whom he shared a 40-year friendship “stood his ground through to the end.”
He further noted that Mangal had also been good friends with Senior Counsel Miles Fitzpatrick and the late Stabroek News editor-in-chief David de Caires.
“He had been our dear friend and physician, our children’s physician and our grandchildren’s physician,” Rodrigues said.
Mangal is survived by his wife Jonna, four children Lars, Mike, Jan and Dr Tanya Mangal-Wiik as well as eight grandchildren and twelve siblings.
